Erich von Falkenhayn

Erich von Falkenhayn (11 September 1861-8 April 1922) was the Chief of German General Staff during World War I.

Biography
A Prussian Junker (a member of the noble, landowning class), Falkenhayn was a career soldier who rose to the top before World War I largely on merit. He was Prussian war minister in August 1914 and succeeded Moltke as chief of general staff in mid-September. On the Western Front he ordered the series of outflanking moves known as the "Race to the Sea", which definitively failed at the first Battle of Ypres in November 1914. After this costly experience, Falkenhayn abandoned the notion of achieving victory through a decisive breakthrough. He believed Germany's best hope lay in inflicting such dispiriting losses upon its enemies that they would sue for peace.

Falkenhayn supported the offensives of Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff in the east, but earned their enmity by removing troops for an eventually successful attack on Serbia. The perceived failure of his offensive at Verdun gave Hindenburg and Ludendorff the opportunity to have him fired in August 1916.

Fall from Power
Demoted to command of German 9th Army campaigning agai nst Romania, Falkenhayn captured the capital, Bucharest, in four months. In 1917, he took command of the Yilderim Force, a mostly Turkish army with German officers in the Middle East, but was removed after failing to stop the British from taking Jerusalem. By the end of the war he was leading the German 10th Army in Lithuania.